


Ordinary Human Days

by nonelvis



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Multi, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 01:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonelvis/pseuds/nonelvis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This time with Amy and Rory was going to be different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ordinary Human Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [such_heights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/such_heights/gifts).



> Written for the prompt "Anything about the three of them having fun together – particularly fondness for the honeymoon period of early s6 or anything during 'Power of Three.'" This story takes place during Eleven's second stay with the Ponds during "The Power of Three," and includes a scene inspired by [this post in Texts From the TARDIS](http://textsfromthetardis.tumblr.com/post/55701475797). Special thanks to platypus for the beta, and Francis Heaney for the crossword clue.

This time with Amy and Rory was going to be different. 

This time, the Doctor could totally handle life on Earth. He wasn't going to let himself lie slack in the lounge for four days of thunderingly epic boredom watching cubes do absolutely nothing at all; no, he was going to embrace human existence in a way he'd rarely done before, with his two best friends at his side and a mystery to solve and the no-doubt staggeringly fascinating lives they led that he somehow knew absolutely nothing about.

It would all start with a proper breakfast. Yes, that was the way to do it: eggs, sausage, bacon, beans, tomatoes, toast, potatoes; the full fatty spectrum of proteins and carbohydrates the British loved so.

And this was how when a bleary-eyed Amy and Rory finally stepped downstairs, Amy muttering, "What in the hell have you done this time, Doctor," they found two matching bowls filled with cold cereal.

"Breakfast!" the Doctor announced cheerfully. Perhaps if he simply spent the rest of the day blocking the back door with his body, Amy and Rory wouldn't ask him anything else. He could still observe the cubes from here for at least a few days, or a few weeks, or however long it took for grass to grow back.

"That was an awful lot of racket for a couple of bowls of cereal," Amy said. "Are you hiding something?"

"Of course not. It just took me a little while to find the bowls. You were probably hearing all the cabinets open and close."

Rory sniffed the air. "Cabinets shouldn't smell like burnt electrics."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Rory," Amy said, "is that soot on the floor?"

"It's just a little bit of charred grass," the Doctor said, "sorry about that, I'll clean it up -"

"Right, then," said Rory, "going outside to see whether we have a back garden or a smoking crater."

It was neither, as it happened, but it _was_ an approximately one-metre square of cubes surrounded by electrical cables held together with duct tape, routed through several transformers, and connected to a plug with melted alligator clips.

"Your house could really use a more modern electrical system," said the Doctor. "Honestly, Rory, if I'd known this deathtrap couldn't handle 540 amps, I'd never have bought it for you and Amy. It's perfectly standard everywhere else in the universe."

" _Five hundred and forty amps?_ "

"Well, how else was I supposed to get a proper electric griddle to cook breakfast for all of us at once? It also offered a unique opportunity to study the cubes under entirely new conditions. I bet UNIT hasn't tried this yet."

"That's because it's _completely mental._ Oh, the lawn. Our poor lawn. It's all dead."

"A little turf, it'll be good as new. Go on in, enjoy your breakfast, I'll clean this up –"

Stupid primitive planet with its primitive electrics, and he hadn't even got a chance at breakfast himself. Toast seemed safe enough. 

Probably.

* * *

Primitive planet, primitive electrics, primitive toasters that weren't designed with an overdrive mode.

The Doctor added "new toaster" to a shopping list that already included "six square metres of turf."

* * *

The turf went in that afternoon, along with a small, apologetic bed of petunias in a previously neglected, slightly shady spot in the yard. Mid-growing season, the Doctor had had less to choose from at the nursery, and had settled for scarlet and yellow interspersed with a variant that shifted along the spectrum from pink to purple as the day went on. That one, admittedly, he'd had to make a special trip for, but only about thirty-five years, and they wouldn't last past the summer anyway.

The neighbours had bordered their flowerbeds with cubes sunk halfway into the ground. The Doctor, unwilling to leave cubes outside and unattended, had gone for a more traditional rock border that hopefully was far less likely to deliberately attack its owners. (Early twenty-first century rocks, that is. Good thing Amy and Rory weren't living in the twenty-third century, but perhaps he'd take them there for a visit sometime, and safe observation of the Great Rock Uprising of 2283.)

He patted the last flakes of mulch into place and wiped his hands on his trousers. There was dirt beneath his fingernails; good, honest, Earth dirt that every gardener in England probably had under their nails on a rare sunny day like this one. It felt like a solid day's work, a stupefyingly normal day's work, in fact, and he'd even enjoyed it. Living things would grow and thrive because of what he'd done, and bring joy to two people he cared about.

"I'll be better at it this time," he'd said to Amy. And "I miss you," which he hadn't been able to bring himself to say while looking at her, but saying it at all was a start. He couldn't keep any of them forever other than inside his head, and it was foolish of him, completely foolish, to not take advantage of every last moment he could spare for the people who lent him their senses of wonder yet somehow kept him grounded. 

And who also kept him whole.

The entire planet was precious to him, but in this body, at this time, these two people especially so – not in the least because the Doctor was utterly secure in his knowledge that he was equally precious to them. If anyone could care for him, after all the things he'd done and still did, he'd be an idiot to reject that. 

He'd been that idiot. He wasn't going to do it again.

He rose, brushed dirt from his knees, and went inside an ordinary human home to perform the ordinary human task of observing small black cubes of unknown provenance.

* * *

June inevitably slipped into July. The cubes faithfully continued obeying Newton's First Law. And the Doctor, quite to his shock, found a certain meditative rhythm to the ordinary human day. Trapped on Earth thirty or forty years previous – he could never remember which, and it hardly mattered – he'd been too angry at his plight to slow down and come to terms with his surroundings; but now it was literally his job to sit, and watch, and wait. He excavated memories of mindfulness techniques he'd learned (and ignored) at the Academy and set himself to living a single moment at a time instead of every moment at once.

Part of him chafed at the restriction, but he set those bits of his brain theorising about the cubes and planning upgrades to the TARDIS. No reason he couldn't work on parallel tracks as usual; one of the trains would simply chug along far more slowly than the others. 

He learned his hosts' schedule. On the TARDIS, Rory had always been the earlier riser, but there "morning" had been an abstract concept; here, it was 6:33am when Rory stumbled downstairs and turned on the kettle. Amy followed a couple of hours later, and then perhaps Rory would leave for work, or Amy would sequester herself in her office, usually with a reminder to the Doctor that no, she couldn't play another round of Wii Tennis, because writing freelance travel articles was actually a job and had to be treated as such if she planned on getting paid.

The Doctor orbited round the house, tidying the breakfast dishes, watering the anachronistic petunias, catching up on the Milaxian puzzle-novels he'd always meant to read but never had. It was strangely like what he'd been told some Earth people considered a holiday, as if for some reason holidays weren't supposed to include unexpectedly uncovering Zygons at the Savoy. 

And equally strangely, he was starting to like this holiday. He'd failed in his first attempt at daily life with the Ponds, and quickly, too – but readjusted priorities had led to contentment with the simplest things, like a late lunch of cheese and apple sandwiches with Amy in the back garden.

"Don't tell Rory," she'd said as she concealed the wedge of Brie beneath a bag of carrots and courgettes in the refrigerator. "I'm supposed to be watching my cholesterol."

"Oh, a little cheese every now and then won't hurt you. It's good for the digestion. You know who loved cheese? Winston Churchill. And Henry the VIII, remember him?"

"How could I forget? I'm not sure we ever got divorced."

"Details," the Doctor said, waving his hand. "What history doesn't know won't hurt it, that's my motto."

Amy chewed her sandwich. "Speaking of history, when was the last time you took the TARDIS out for a spin? Seems like every time I turn around, you're here, and you haven't complained once about not having enough to do."

"You and Rory live average daily lives," he said. "I'm just trying to follow along while I keep an eye on the cubes."

"Yeah, but that didn't turn out so well the last time."

"It's a work in progress. And I've been out once or twice, whenever I've felt a twinge of wanderlust."

"Good." Amy leaned her head on his shoulder. "Don't get me wrong; I love having you around, especially now that you're not setting the garden on fire. But this has to work for all of us, you know?"

"It is. Well, it is for me, and it sounds like it's working for you, so I have to assume everything's fine with Rory, too."

"Even if it wasn't, I can deal with him."

"I would expect nothing less, Pond."

"So yeah, everything's fine," Amy said. "Except ... weren't those flowers pink yesterday? I could have sworn they were pink, and they look orange now."

"It's just a trick of the light," the Doctor said. "Go on, eat your delicious, cholesterol-laden sandwich. Mmm, tasty cheese."

"Did you plant alien flowers in our back garden? Do they feed on human blood? Are they going to try to eat the neighbours?"

"Amy!"

"Oh, you know I'm joking."

"Anyway," the Doctor said, "I was very careful to get you the vegetarian variety. Just feed them potato scraps every night and they won't eat you. Probably."

That earned him a punch in the arm. He returned it, softly, with a smile.

* * *

The three of them spent Saturday night sprawled on the couch, catching up on a recorded _Apprentice_ and a mesmerisingly awful film Rory had acquired from America via dubious means. All the Doctor knew about it was that it involved a lot of fast cars, explosions, and terrible dialogue, which didn't distinguish it from a number of other American films he'd seen, although he had to admit that in most cases, the vehicles usually weren't driven by sentient, land-dwelling sharks who spoke in subtitled bellows. In his experience, sharks were noiseless hunters, but he supposed that once you got to the point of positing land-based sharks with Formula One-level driving skills, suggesting complex, human-audible language wasn't a leap too far beyond.

"Rory," he said, "I've been visiting this planet for nearly a thousand years. I've seen more of its past, present, and future than anyone alive today. And this – this -" Searching for the right word was futile. No single human word could ever approximate what he was watching. "Human beings have evolved over millions of years. Countless civilisations have risen and fallen. This planet has produced some of the most exquisite art the universe has ever seen. Yet modern society has chosen to squander its cultural heritage by creating and watching a film about land sharks driving killer rocket-powered vehicles across the Sahara Desert."

"Not a fan of the shark-based cinematic genre, then, Doctor?"

"There's more than one of these?"

"Now you've done it," Amy mumbled, nestling into the Doctor's side. She draped an arm across his chest. It was much nicer than watching the sharks. "Rory's an expert on stupid shark movies. This one's pretty good, though. I like the scrappy little one with the busted fin."

"Seriously, Doctor, this one's peak of form," Rory said. "You're just lucky you weren't here for _Sharkopalypse II: Hammerhead Havoc._ Now, that was a terrible movie."

"Impossible. Nothing could be worse than this."

"And yet," Rory continued, laying his head on the Doctor's other shoulder, "you're still here snuggling on the couch with us watching _Shark Race 3000._ It's touching, really." He clasped hands with Amy, interlocking the two of them in a band of warmth across the Doctor's chest.

Amy's fingers curled between Rory's and settled into the gap between two of the Doctor's shirt buttons. "It's the scrappy little one with the busted fin, you see," the Doctor said in a faint voice. "I just want to see if he makes it to the end."

Amy's other arm wriggled out from beside him and up to his neck. A fingertip hovered over his nape, tracing the curve of his collar. He was draped and dizzy with Ponds, and why hadn't they ever spent an evening on the TARDIS like this? A comfortable couch, a sweet and savoury meal, bonding through mutual appreciation of badly written and shot cinema instead of being shot at. Running for one's life provided unmistakable excitement, but so, the Doctor discovered, did Rory's breath at his neck, and the delicate touch of his lips to the pulse point at the Doctor's jawline.

The scrappy little one with the busted fin crossed the finish line first. Predictable, like the rest of the film, although the Doctor had to admit he hadn't seen the side entertainment coming.

"Amy, Rory," he said, swallowing as two of the fingers Amy had curled over his chest managed to undo a button. "This ... this is different."

Amy looked up at him, calm and sleepy-eyed. "Different good?"

Another button loosed itself from its hole. "Um. Um." Rory gently nipped at the Doctor's ear. "Oh," the Doctor said, hearts thumping louder now. "Um. Different good, I think. But I have some very important questions, like isn't Earth the sort of backwards little planet that frowns on sex with your in-laws?"

Rory briefly detached himself from the Doctor's earlobe. "Well, yeah, usually," he said. "But usually your in-laws aren't several centuries younger than you. And usually they haven't been looking for an excuse to get in your pants for the past few years."

"Speak for yourself," Amy said, and the Doctor's bowtie slipped free of his collar. "Some of us have been trying to get in his pants for a lot longer than that."

Given the number of buttons Amy had undone already, it only seemed fair to twist free a couple of hers. The Doctor's fingers brushed the half-moon of breast peeking over Amy's bra. "Okay, next question," he said, and if Amy snuggled any closer, she'd be in his lap, though he supposed that was practically inevitable at this point. "You don't find this a bit weird, seducing your daughter's husband? Even if you think she wouldn't mind?"

Now Amy was looking at him as if he were an idiot, so nothing new there. "Who do you think convinced us to do this in the first place?"

The Doctor muttered, "I have _got_ to have a talk with that woman," and then Amy's lips were on his chest and Rory's hand was slipping from Amy's, gliding towards the Doctor's trousers, and talking with anyone, much less River, seemed very pointless indeed.

"Any more questions?" Rory said.

The Doctor tilted his head towards Rory's lips and said, "Nothing I can't work out on my own."

* * *

The Doctor drifted in that serene, languid state just before fully waking, when even his mighty brain had only whirred up to one-quarter speed, and most of his senses were very still and quiet.

Hearing wasn't one of them.

"Aw, look at his flat little head," Amy said. "He's all rectangular."

"Rectangular?" Rory exhaled. "I think you might have had enough."

Smell was beginning to come online. Something pungent and sweet sauntered past his nostrils; something smoky, rather like ...

"It's completely rectangular, and you know it. He's like a ... a ... a shoebox! He's a shoebox!" Amy said. The Doctor felt her lean over him, then drop back against her pillow as she said, "Doughnut me."

The brain was definitely booting up now, factoring in his position (supine); location (soft, springy surface, not entirely unlike a bed, which would also explain the pillow to his right Amy was currently leaning against, as well as the light cotton sheets covering ...); situation (... his body, which was naked, with something flat and cool balanced on his forehead ...); and most recent memories (... ah, yes, _that_ explained the nudity, and quite enjoyably as well).

Smell, still processing the smoke now 99.9998% identified as _cannabis sativa,_ suggested there might be yeast and icing sugar nearby. Well, that at least was worth fully waking up for.

The Doctor yawned, blinking slowly, sniffing the air. The flat object, jarred by his wide yawn, tumbled pointily from his forehead down his face. It was a cube.

"Amy," he said, staring up at the ceiling, and then at Amy as she hovered over him and removed the cube. "There was a cube on my forehead."

"Yes," she said, stifling a giggle. "I believe there was."

"Why was there a cube on my forehead?"

"Because you -" The giggle burst forth in a marijuana-scented explosion. "Have a head shaped like a cardboard box," she finished, slumping back against the headboard.

"Also," the Doctor continued, struggling to sit up, "I think I smell marijuana. Are you two actually smoking marijuana?"

Newsprint rustled from the Doctor's left as Rory shifted position and reached across the bed. "Anniversary gift from our incorrigible daughter. She stole it from herself back in Leadworth – Mels always wondered who nicked her stash. Doughnut?" Rory asked, offering him a plate. "They're really, really, _really_ good, but that might just be the pot talking."

The Doctor chose a chocolate-glazed doughnut liberally topped with hundreds and thousands and bit into it. Sugar spiked directly from his mouth to his oesophagus to his stomach to his mighty brain, which whirred happily at 101% of normal speed and requested more power to the engines. 

"So," he said, after another bite, and a friendly reminder from his brain that while it needed as much sugar as possible to continue operating at peak efficiency, there was probably no amount of doughnuts that would make the rest of this conversation less awkward. "So," he tried again. Maybe another word would be easier. "Us. Eh?" There, a whole new word and a syllable! Surely his message was perfectly clear now.

Amy inhaled the joint, held her breath, exhaled a stream of fragrant smoke. "Oh, you mean the sex?"

"Yes, I mean the sex," he said, swallowing his words and suddenly clutching the sheet over his bare chest. 

"Oh. Yeah. We should do that again sometime."

"That's it? You and Rory practically drag me into your bedroom to have your way with me, and your only reaction is 'we should do that again sometime'?"

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding." Amy passed the cigarette back to Rory and curled closer to the Doctor. "It was great. Wonderful. Amazing. And a lot of other adjectives I'd probably remember if I weren't ever-so-slightly stoned."

Rory held the joint out to the Doctor. "You want some?"

"Of course not, Rory, and I'm surprised you're even offering it to me. You, a nurse, inhaling smoke into your lungs -" The remainder of his doughnut was now in his mouth, being held there by Amy. Well, waste not, want not. He'd said his piece.

"A few times a year won't hurt us, and it's a hell of a lot less dangerous than giant robots with laser beams, or Cybermen, or fish-vampires." Rory took another puff, then handed the cigarette back to Amy. "All right, which one of you knows this one? 'Extravaganza's acts clear up confusion.' Eleven letters."

Amy sucked in the dregs of the cigarette, now burnt to a stub so tiny it was nothing more than an orange glow at her fingertips. "Ow ow ow ow." She stubbed it out on the Doctor's cube, moving it and its snowdrift of ashes to the side table. "Rory, time to put the crossword away."

"Amy, it's Sunday morning, we've nowhere to be and nothing to do other than watch the cubes with the Doctor."

Amy licked her index finger, pressing it carefully onto the Doctor's chest to gather stray hundreds and thousands. She slid her finger across his lips, and he opened his mouth to take her in. Amy. Sugar. Wax. How she tasted elsewhere, far beyond her hand.

"I can think of other things we can do with the Doctor besides watching cubes," she said.

Newsprint and a pencil hit the floor. "Right, excellent point as always," said Rory.

"Spectacular," said the Doctor, and let his in-laws take the lead.

* * *

The TARDIS landed in River's cell, where she was sitting cross-legged on her bed, reading _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes._

"River Song," the Doctor said, pointing at her, "you are a meddler."

She didn't bother to look up from her book. "I've sometimes made adjustments here and there. You're going to have to be more specific."

"I can't. I don't know if you know about it yet."

That got her to close her book and open her diary instead. "Well, you're going to have to give me something to go on."

"It involves your parents."

She tossed the diary aside and patted the bed. "Oh, you've slept with them, then? Good for them. And good for you! Come sit next to me, you darling space Lothario."

He flopped beside her, arms crossed in sulking position. "I am not a 'space Lothario,' as you so delicately put it."

"If you say so, sweetie." She leaned over, kissed his cheek, and returned to her book, inexcusably calm at the precise moment when he needed her to be flailing in anger and despair at what he'd done. How else was he supposed to manage his guilt at engaging in consensual activity in which none of the parties involved should have been involved in the first place?

"You're not upset?"

"Why should I be? They're adults. We're adults. I don't exactly have the typical parent-child relationship with them. And I suspect you don't have a typical friendship with them, either."

"That's beside the point."

"No, that _is_ the point." She sighed and snapped her book shut. "You care about them. They care about you. I care about all of you. What's wrong with doing something that makes everyone happy?"

Optimum sulking position was going to require more slumping against the wall and a frownier face. The Doctor managed the first, but the second was hampered by the distressing facts of River's logic.

"Nothing, I suppose."

"That's right," she said. "So if you've come here to sulk and play the guilty martyr, you can step right back into that box. I'm in the middle of an excellent book about a hyperintelligent man who needs to rely on his friends for a dose of humanity, and I can only deal with one of you at a time."

"River," he said.

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

"You're welcome ... space Lothario."

"Meddler."

"That turned out just fine for you." She leaned over him and pushed his braces from his shoulders. 

He pressed a kiss to River's neck, felt a satisfied hum in response. "I suppose I'm just irresistible to you Ponds today."

"You are most days," River said. "But especially when you admit I'm right."

* * *

It was a short trip back to the house. Amy and Rory were snuggling in the kitchen without him, but that was all right; he wasn't married to them, after all, and they were entitled to as much time together as they liked. There was always the possibility of another movie night, or at least the activities that had followed, another time.

For now, the Doctor glanced at the cubes, still immobile and cubic in their various positions around the house. Wii Tennis would pass the time until dinner, if the Ponds or the cubes didn't do anything to hold his attention. Another ordinary human afternoon. At least for now.


End file.
